PYD consolidates its power and the world keeps silent: Attempted assassination of independent journalist and new detentions in Syrian Kurdistan

PRESS RELEASE

On Wednesday, November 23, 2016, the correspondent of the independent radio station Welat FM, Sardar Dari, was found unconscious and severely injured in al-Khamael, about 20 kilometres from al-Hasakah. The previous evening, fighters of the YPG had abducted him from his internet coffee shop in the al-Mufti neighbourhood of al-Hasakah. He was brutally beaten and stabbed with a knife in his back, causing internal bleedings in his lungs. According to the person who found Sardar Dari in al-Khamael, the Asayiș refused to help the heavily injured and to bring him to a hospital. The witness thus informed Daris’s family. The journalist still is in hospital, however, he is not in mortal danger anymore.
Sardar Dari reports regularly and impartially about social developments in al-Hasakah. Recently he documented the closure of an university by the local PYD bodies.

Apart from independent journalists, especially politicians and activists of the Kurdish National Council in Syria (KNC) and of its member parties are affected by abductions, attacks and other forms of violence by the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its armed forces, the YPG and the Asayiș.
One of the latest victims is Nashat Zaza, member of the central committee of the Kurdistan Democratic Party – Syria (PDK-S). In mid-August, he was abducted together with dozens of other politicians and activists. In the evening of November 23, after three months of unlawful arrest, he and Nafih Abdullah, also member of the central committee of the PDK-S, were finally released . On Thursday, November 24, another four persons, all of them members of the politburo of the Kurdish Union Party in Syria (Yekîtî), were released from the prisons of the PYD: Sulayman Oso, Anwar Naso, Maruf Mula Ahmad and ʿAbdussamad Khalaf Biro, who had been abducted by the Asayiș one week earlier. [Link]
Nevertheless, those releases are no reason to be optimistic, as simultaneously the abductions of ʿAbdulfatah Isa in al‑Malikiya (Dêrik) and Rashid Hasan Rashid in al‑Jawadiya (Çil Axa), both members of the PDK-S, as well as of Jadan ‘Ali, member of the Kurdish Reform Movement in Syria, in the village of Alwankî became public.

The Kurdish National Council in Syria strongly condemns these repressive measures by the PYD’s security apparatus. We won’t stop the documentation and publication of such human rights violations. It is more than frightening that the international community keeps silent – and partly even supports the PYD in strengthening and expanding its authoritarian rule through repression and violence.
It is impossible to achieve peace and democracy in Syria through war and dictatorship. The KNC refuses to yield to this pressure and will continue to advocate for the respect for human rights as well as for the development of democratic structures.

About KNC Geneva Office

The Geneva Office of the Kurdish National Council in Syria (KNC) organizes the activities of the members of the KNC in Europe. We are glad to mediate contacts or arrange interviews with represenatives of the KNC.
Moreover, our website, which is currently work in progress, will soon inform you about the political positions of the KNC, publish its press releases and its current activities. A special focus will be on the peace negotiations in Geneva.